Assassination is Not Your Friend

I don’t know if Glenn Beck is really talking about what he sounds like he’s talking about here. As I read it, he was speaking hypothetically, like “what do we do if?…” The sentiment, however, is common enough to be talked of. Sometimes people feel like killing a President. But it’s been a while since someone killed a president out of patriotic obligation, out of the need to dispatch a tyrant. In fact, I’m pretty sure the last one to do that was acting out of patriotic obligation to an abhorrent rebellion aimed at using the rhetoric of liberty in order to keep men in bondage.

But let’s say that Trump, or Hillary for that matter, becomes the caudillo/caudilla of our worst nightmares. Is assassination the way to deal with him/her?

No. Here is why:

If classical references are lost on you, this is the Death of Caesar. Julius Caeser was assassinated at the beginning of a public meeting of the Senate by 12 Senators who had decided that Julius Caeser was a threat to the Republic, that his becoming Dictator Perpetuus was the latest in a string of unconstitutional excesses that would end in Rome becoming an authoritarian state.

In this, they were almost certainly correct.

But in assassinating them, they made that state certain. In assassinating Caesar, they made him a martyr, and themselves – and the cause they espoused – the enemies of good order. Within a few years, the Roman imperium is divided among Caeser’s heirs. Within 20, Octavian has legally obtained from a tame Senate all the authority that matters. And the Roman people stood mum as long peace obtained.

Brutus and Cassius failed. John Wilkes Booth failed. Assassination is not a path to liberty.

There was speculation in 2008 around the prospect of Obama being assassinated too. Quite a lot of it, and most of it from his own side. The Democrats were really steamed up over the concept. ‘Obama assassination porn’ was not exaggeration.
As for Trump – I wouldn’t mind betting that hair is bulletproof.